Cleaning cards for magnetic track writing/reading units, such as, for example, for automatic teller machines of banks and the like, are known and are, for example, described in DE-PS 35 38 223. In such cards, a cleaning felt is provided on one side of a card-shaped PVC carrier between two marginal codable magnetic strips, which felt, upon insertion of the cleaning card into the involved device, slides on the magnetic reading head of the device and cleans it. The cleaning effect can be improved by the preceding application of a cleaning fluid to the felt. However, the cleaning effect obtainable in this way is hardly sufficient to meet today's requirements. Moreover, such cleaning cards are practically unusable for chip card contact stations since a felt sliding along contact springs sensing the upper surface of the chip is not suited to effective cleaning of the contact sites.
A cleaning card is proposed in DE-C-196 22 287 in which a cleaning material carrying slide is built into a carrier corresponding to the chip card measurements, which slide after the insertion of the cleaning card into a writing/reading device can be moved back and forth to clean the contacts. This solution is expensive.
It is, therefore, the object of the present invention to provide a cleaning card, suited by simple means, to clean magnetic track writing and reading heads, as well as chip contact stations, in an absolutely reliable and optimal way.